Political leader imprisoned for speech
In July 2013, the Algerian authorities refused to grant Karim Tabbou’s opposition party legal status. Tabbou has been an active figure of the Hirak movement since its beginning. His activism and political opposition made him a target of the authorities who arrested him in September 2019. Karim Tabbou has been in solitary confinement for six months since his arrest in September 2019. He is only allowed a one-hour break per day without contact with other prisoners. Despite suffering alarming health condition that solicited a public statement from a group of Algerian doctors warning about the dangers of keeping him in prison and mobilization to demand his release, he remains in prison to date. According to his lawyers who visited him on 25 March 2020 immediately after the appeal verdict, he was showing signs of weak health in prison including a partial facial paralysis. His health has improved now but like many other prisoners, he runs the risk of the spread of COVID-19.
In February 2019, peaceful mass protests started in Algeria marking the beginning of the now famous Hirak movement. The protests initially started to call former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika not to run for a fifth term. The Hirak street pressure forced Bouteflika’s resignation in April 2019 and staged peaceful mass protests around the country.
As new presidential elections were announced for 12 December 2019, the Hirak continued to oppose these elections and demanded radical political change. Eventually, the authorities began to crackdown on activists, opposition, journalists and protesters. Karim Tabbou is not the only political detainee in Algeria. Many other individuals suffer the same fate for expressing opinions or participating in protests, such as journalist Khaled Drareni and civil society activist Abdelouahab Fersaoui, currently held in pre-trial detention for speech. These arrests send a deliberate and frightening message to demonstrators, including political and other civil society activists, that anyone who dares to oppose or criticize the government will be punished.